20

2009

Richard Bronk an important reminder

Guardian economics editor Larry Elliot appreciates Richard Bronk’spoint of view, that of putting imagination back into economics. It’s a call that’s been heard before, but was obviously forgotten.

‘There have been many economists down the years who have expressed scepticism about reducing their discipline to a mechanistic subject. Malthus told Ricardo to be wary of becoming too attached to abstract hypotheses; Schumpeter talked of creative destruction; Hayek saw the market as a voyage of discovery; Keynes stressed the importance of “animal spirits”.

‘Somewhere down the years, these insights have been lost. It is as if physicists still thought that the Newtonian view of the world was all that mattered, and that Einstein had never been born.’